Movies & TV Shows that have Advertised for Apple for FREE

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Some of the famous shows and movies from which Apple has got a lot of free product placement.

Have you noticed how every other movie tends to prefer Apple (AAPL) when it comes to tech products? Surprisingly enough, even though Apple is probably the only company that makes such frequent appearances on most television shows and movies, it does not pay for product placement. The company simply refuses to. Yet their products continue to get insane amounts of screen time. But then, in its defense, Apple can say that it never asks that its products be used. At least not anymore.

This is a list of popular TV shows and movies that have been advertising for the tech giant for free:

In 1996, Apple was struggling. Jon Holtzman, the marketing manager, came up with a million-dollar idea to make a deal with Mission Impossible’s producers. The deal was that Apple products would be used in the movie and in return Apple would promote the movie in its advertisements. Holtzman told Bloomberg, “We saved almost $500,000 in production costs - and got Brian De Palma to direct and Tom Cruise to act in it.” But that was the last time and since then Apple has not paid for product placement.

Apple has continued to see quite a bit of success without dipping into its rather deep pockets. In Legally Blonde, Apple’s iBook is shown to be considerably “cooler” than the rest of the laptops in a classroom scene. Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods, the girly and sweet protagonist, finds herself taking college seriously without letting go of her individuality, as shown by her orange iBook among a sea of rather bland laptops.

Apple managed to build its brand image early on, even before its products gained mainstream success. The Washington Post notes that in earlier episodes of 24, “"good guy" characters used Apple products while the "bad guys" used Windows (MSFT) and non-branded PCs.” Subliminal messages, much?